Editor’s note: Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.
While the White House and CIA have said they regret including an assessment by British intelligence about Iraqi attempts to secure uranium from Africa in President Bush’s State of the Union Address, foreign leaders and British intelligence continue to claim the information was and is correct.
In the speech, President Bush said: ”The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Democratic political leaders have attacked the statement since learning that one document associated with the claim was a forgery. Nevertheless, British intelligence, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard continue to stand by the statement – suggesting there is other strong, corroborating evidence for it.
CIA Director George Tenet Friday took the blame for the inclusion of the statement in the speech. Earlier White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was a mistake to include the statement.
Downing Street has stuck by its claim that there was a link between Niger and Iraqi attempts to procure uranium, despite a letter supposedly relating to negotiations proving a forgery. Officials said the CIA had not seen further British intelligence material on Niger, despite its close co-operation with MI6.
Blair yesterday rejected a British parliamentary committee’s finding that the ”jury is out” on his key dossier about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
In a strong appearance before the liaison committee of select committee chairmen, Blair stood by the validity of the intelligence that formed the background to the dossier he released in the lead-up to the U.S.-led war – despite Washington’s retractions and flip-flops in the face of mounting political opposition.
In the U.S., Democrats called for a congressional inquiry into the White House’s admission on Tuesday that the President should not have claimed Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger.
The British foreign affairs committee said on Monday the jury was out on the claims of the Iraqi threat.
Blair, however, said: “I’m afraid that, in that regard, for me the jury is not out. It’s not out at all.
”I think it’s perfectly clear, as we made plain in the September dossier last year, that Saddam, once he realised as he did back last September that weapons inspectors were coming back in, was then going to engage in an active program of concealment.”
Asked if he would concede that, if no weapons of mass destruction were found, the case for war was faulty, Blair replied: ”I don’t concede it at all that the intelligence at the time was wrong.”
Howard yesterday backed the validity of U.S. and British intelligence reports, saying he did not accept that ”American intelligence generally in relation to Iraq has been wrong.”
”One individual document has been judged as a forgery by the IAEA and that doesn’t mean that American intelligence or British intelligence has failed or that Australian assessments have failed,” he said.
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